


no other faith

by lupinely



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, loved the finale. needed a little bit more closure for these two.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 03:41:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11843256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinely/pseuds/lupinely
Summary: “It’s so strange,” Lucretia says softly. She is staring at the distant horizon, where ocean meets sky. “It’s been a year now, and I can’t help but feel like it’s all just going to reset again like it did all those times before. Like we’ll have to start over.”Taako almost laughs, then doesn’t, because he knows exactly what she means. “Please don’t speak that reality into existence,” he says, trying for humor. “I’m still trying to get used to this one.”





	no other faith

 

 

 

The wedding reception is still going strong late in the evening when Taako walks out onto the beach, away from the party for a moment and towards the dark sky and ink-black sea. He stands at the water’s edge, the distant but joyful sounds of the party behind him and the immense swelling movement and noise of the ocean before him, spread out beneath endless starry sky. It is a beautiful moment. He thinks about doing a lot of different things—casting levitation and hovering out over the waves for a while, or going to find Kravitz to show him the light of the stars on the water, or going back to the party and getting wasted with his friends and family—but in the end he does none of those things, simply stands there and lets the moment happen to him.

He does not hear Lucretia approach, as her footfalls are silent on the sand, yet somehow he is not surprised to find that she is there once she arrives. She is wearing a beautiful blue dress made of a light gauzy material that floats on the breeze, and she gives him a small, tentative smile. “Beautiful night,” she says. “And a lovely wedding.”

“Yes,” Taako says, and then nothing else. Out of everybody, he has seen Lucretia the least often during the past year. Even he is not quite sure whether this is by accident or design. When he sees her now, he remembers, forcefully, the memory as crisp and clear as a mirror’s reflection, standing next to her, Magnus, and Merle against everything, at the end of the world. How everything burned away, turned to light, and the four of them remained. He doesn’t know if that is when he forgave her or not; whether he has even done so yet.

“It’s so strange,” Lucretia says softly. She is staring at the distant horizon, where ocean meets sky. “It’s been a year now, and I can’t help but feel like it’s all just going to reset again like it did all those times before. Like we’ll have to start over.”

Taako almost laughs, then doesn’t, because he knows exactly what she means. “Please don’t speak that reality into existence,” he says, trying for humor. “I’m still trying to get used to this one.”

“Me too.” Lucretia fiddles with the hem of her sleeve for a moment and Taako realizes suddenly that she is nervous, and that he hasn’t seen her be this sort of nervous, the all-encompassing and ashamed sort, in several decades. “I understand if you don’t want to talk about this,” she says. “There are...so many things I want to say to you, but if you don’t want to hear them now, or ever, then that’s all right.”

Taako takes a breath and looks up at the sky. He is thinking of black opal. “Oh, go on,” he says. “Hit me.”

“You came back.” Lucretia looks on the verge of tears, and embarrassed by it. “You didn’t have to do that. I...”

“Of course I did,” Taako says quickly, trying to forestall any crying. “I couldn’t let Magnus and Merle take all the glory, after all.”

“Of course.” Lucretia is watching him, but Taako avoids her gaze. “I just...wanted to say thank you. I didn’t think any of you would stand by me at the end. And that _you_ did, after all that I did to you.” She sighs. A short, painful silence. Then she whispers: “I don’t understand how the others have forgiven me.”

Taako closes his eyes. Damn it, Lucretia. “I don’t, either.”

The ocean swells. Taako bites the inside of his mouth, so it hurts, and then he forces himself to keep talking. “But I think that’s just how forgiveness works. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense, sometimes it does. Sometimes it just means you love the person more than you hurt.”

When he opens his eyes, he sees Lucretia looking at him, tears streaking silently down her face. “Oh, don’t,” he says. “I’ve been crying on and off at this damn wedding all day long, I don’t need to start up the waterworks again when we’re all supposed to be drunk and dancing right now.”

Lucretia laughs shakily and wipes her eyes. “Taako...”

He cuts her off. “Look. I still don’t know if what you did was right or not, but—I do know what we did, with the relics, sure as hell wasn’t. And everything worked out in the end, and that’s what matters, when it really did happen against all fucking odds. You know? Live and let go. We spent so much time trapped in that century’s cycle, reliving the same emotions and loss over and over again that I think maybe we forgot how to go forward and feel some new emotions. And that’s what we needed. That’s what we have the chance to do now. Thanks to you.”

Lucretia is weeping openly now, but smiling, too, and her eyes are shining as she looks at Taako. “Thanks to all of us,” she says. “Thanks to you. You’re the one—at the end of everything, you stood there in front of all of us and showed us a third option that none of us had managed to come up with in one hundred years. I think about that moment every day, Taako.”

“It was your spell,” Taako says sheepishly. “You did all the work.”

“No,” Lucretia says. “I didn’t.”

They fall quiet together, listening to the sounds of the party behind them, still going strong even as some of the guests drift away to bed. Then tears start to fall from Lucretia’s eyes in earnest again. She says, “Can I—?” and Taako nods, and she wraps her arms around him and hugs him tightly.

He hugs her just as tightly back.

“I’m so sorry about everything with Lup,” Lucretia says shakily. She is slightly taller than him, and her face is buried against his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Taako just nods, finding that he is unable to speak, and keeps holding on to her. He is amazed and utterly unsurprised to discover that, somewhere along the way, probably sooner than either of them thinks, he _has_ forgiven her.

After a while, they break apart. To try to hide his own tears from her, Taako holds Lucretia’s face and kisses her on the forehead, very briefly, and she laughs, a beautiful and wonderful and familiar sound.

“Don’t you dare tell anyone I cried again,” Taako says. “This day is kicking my ass up and down.”

“I promise,” Lucretia says.

In the distance, there is the sound of a thunderous crash, and then Magnus roaring with laughter. Someone—likely Lup—shoots a firework into the air and it explodes in blue and silver light.

Lucretia is smiling. “I suppose we should get back to the party.”

“It sounds as if they need our supervision,” Taako agrees, and the two of them head back up the beach towards the wedding reception, side by side, leaving parallel footprints in the sand.

 

 

 

 


End file.
